A luxury helicopter charter service has been ordered to pay $267,500 for failing to ensure the health and safety of tourists, even though it had no customers on Whakaari Island when it erupted.
The violent upheaval sent gas, steam and rocks hurtling skywards and cost 22 people their lives on December 9, 2019. Forty seven people had been on the Bay of Plenty volcano at the time, the tragedy touching families around the globe. Australians, Americans, Germans, Chinese, British and a Malaysian all killed.
Inflite Charters Limited was one of 13 agencies, individuals and tourism operators Worksafe charged for breaches of the law.
The risk of eruption was raised to Level 2 from the 18th of November when GNS raised the alert level and issued alert bulletins.
Today in the Auckland District Court Inflite changed its plea to guilty and was sentenced to breaches prior to the eruption.
Judge Evangelos Thomas laying out multiple failures at an earlier hearing:
"It did not carry out adequate risk assessments on Whakaari itself, it did not have safety management systems or safe operating procedures itself for tours to Whakaari.
"It says it relied on it's subcontractors to do that.
"However, it cannot contract out of its obligations under the act, those obligations still exist.
"Ultimately though there were gaps in the necessary measures that should have been in place on the island. There was a lack of emergency appropriate planning. The only emergency shelter for example on Whakaari was a metal container unit used to store some emergency supplies, there was otherwise inadequate shelter in the event of an eruption on the island," Judge Thomas said.
He said it was only through "luck" that Inflite had no customers on the island at that time.
He described a situation where Inflite essentially left it up to customers to assess the risk of visiting the volcano, a "wholly unrealistic" set of expectations.
"Inflite was selling the tour as its own, Inflite was the one stop shop for the customer to satisfy themselves that it was safe to go.
"At these sorts of locations there can be no doubt that they needed to be ready for anything.
"Mother Nature doesn't play by our rule book, and we have to be prepared for consequences that we may not have been anticipating but which we know are possible."
As he does at every Whakaari hearing, Judge Thomas started with a mihi, an acknowledgement of those who lost their lives.
Inflite's lawyer Alistair Darroch told the court his clients acknowledged the suffering that had occurred.
"It acknowledges that it did not do all that it should've done and its guilty plea is a recognition of that. It regrets it didn't achieve the high standards it attempts to produce in its operations."
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